Bookkeeping for real estate agencies.
Agencies run two financial worlds: the trust account with its strict rules, and the general account where the business actually lives. We keep the general side immaculate and the flows between them clean.
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Both sides of an agency's books.
General account, immaculate
Commission income, franchise fees, marketing recoveries and operating costs all coded and reconciled on a weekly rhythm.
Trust flows recorded right
Disbursements from trust to general recorded correctly, with a clean audit trail for your annual trust audit.
Commission splits
From contract to settlement to statement - splits and conjunctions tracked so every agent's numbers reconcile.
Agency payroll
Retainers plus commissions handled through compliant payroll, with payday super on every run.
Rent roll visibility
Management income tracked by property and landlord, so the roll's real performance is visible - useful long before you ever sell it.
BAS by registered agents
Lodged on time on agent deadlines, every cycle.
What a strong agency file gets right.
Agencies manage the trust account carefully, because they have to. The agencies with the clearest view of their own performance give the agency's own books that same attention, and it shows up in every one of these.
Trust money kept distinct from agency income
Rent collected on behalf of landlords, deposits and sale monies held are not the agency's money. Only the fee properly drawn from trust is income. Where that distinction blurs in the general ledger, turnover balloons to the size of the rent roll and the BAS reports GST on money the agency never owned.
Property software doing both of its jobs
PropertyMe, Console, PropertyTree and Rex run the trust ledger, the disbursements and the owner statements. None of them is the agency's general ledger. Franchise fees, marketing levies, salaries, office rent, vehicles and software all live on the other side, and the two need a defined crossing point. Most files we inherit do not have one, which is where the confusion starts and never really stops.
Commission drawn on the right day
Trust rules set when a fee can be taken and what has to be true before it is. Drawing early, drawing an estimate, or drawing against the wrong ledger is a trust breach, not a bookkeeping preference, and it is exactly what an audit is designed to find. Queensland agencies sit under the Property Occupations Act and the Agents Financial Administration Act; every state runs its own version with its own audit requirement.
VPA landing in one place
Vendor paid advertising gets booked as commission on one file, netted off to nothing on another, and left in trust on a third. Recovered advertising is an expense and a recovery, and it needs to be both. Handled loosely, it either hides real marketing spend or inflates revenue with money that only ever passed through.
Salespeople on a footing you have checked
Commission-only arrangements, agents who invoice through their own entity, and agents who work the agency's leads under the agency's brand are not the same thing. Worker classification is a live ATO focus, super is generally payable on commission for employees, and the Real Estate Industry Award sets a floor that a commission structure has to clear. Getting it wrong surfaces years later with interest attached.
Settlement timing read apart from performance
Commission is earned at settlement, not when the contract is signed, so the month you listed everything looks flat and the quiet month two settlements later looks like a record. Without the pipeline mapped to expected settlement dates, cash decisions get made on a number that describes the past rather than the next ninety days.
What the first month looks like.
The first job is drawing a clear line between trust and general, because everything downstream of that line is wrong until it exists.
- 01
Look at the file
A free health check across your Xero file, how your property software feeds it and a sample of pay runs. You get a clear account of where you stand and what it takes to tighten up, before you commit to anything.
- 02
Draw the line
Every point where money moves from trust into the agency's operating account gets identified and given a coded home in Xero - management fees, letting fees, commission drawn, recoveries. Trust balances stay where they belong. Your BAS then reports agency income only, which is the whole point.
- 03
Sort commission and payroll
Splits, conjunctions and referral fees tracked from contract through settlement to the agent's statement, so the numbers reconcile before anyone argues about them. Retainer and commission mixes run through compliant payroll with payday super, and classification is checked rather than assumed.
- 04
Report on both engines
A monthly report that separates rent roll income from sales commission, shows franchise fees and marketing levies as their own cost, and maps the settlement pipeline forward. Records kept in the state your trust auditor expects to find them. Same bookkeeper every month.
What this looks like in practice.
An independent agency, two offices, roughly 640 managements and a six-agent sales team.
Case study · Real estate agenciesA trust account that reconciled, and an operating account that didn't.The trust boundary documented, and commission splits that stopped being month-end guesswork. See what changed
The background
A well-run suburban agency with a principal who had built the rent roll over eleven years. The trust account had never had an audit issue - that side of the business was taken seriously.
The challenge
The operating side had not kept up. Commission withdrawals from trust to operating happened on a rhythm the principal knew and nobody had written down, which is fine until an auditor, a buyer or a new bookkeeper asks. Agent commission splits were worked out at month end on a spreadsheet, from figures reconstructed after the fact, and disagreements were settled by whoever remembered the deal better. Sales commission and property management fees landed in the same profit and loss, so the rent roll - the durable, recurring, saleable part - could not be seen on its own, and it was being flattered by a good sales year.
The approach
Two things: write down the boundary that already worked, and give the two halves of the business separate ledgers so each can be looked at honestly.
How the work ran
Weeks 1–4
Document the trust boundary
The withdrawal process mapped, timed and written into a one-page procedure with a named person and a frequency. Nothing about the handling changed - what changed is that it can be explained without relying on the principal's memory, which is what an audit, a sale or a staff change actually tests.
Weeks 5–8
Split management from sales
The chart of accounts rebuilt with property management and sales as separate reporting segments, each carrying its own revenue, direct wages and a defensible share of premises and administration. Prior periods restated on the same basis so the trend was visible rather than asserted.
Weeks 9–12
Commission splits from the ledger
Agent splits calculated from recorded settlements rather than reconstructed monthly, with a statement each agent receives and can check. Disagreements became a reconciliation instead of a conversation about who remembered correctly.
What changed
- Trust withdrawal process
- undocumentedwritten, named, scheduled
- Rent roll reporting
- merged with salesstandalone P&L
- Commission splits
- month-end spreadsheetfrom the ledger, per agent
- Agent statements
- noneissued and checkable
- Management income trend
- an annual guessmonthly, restated back
Agency principals usually know roughly what their rent roll is worth. Roughly is fine until somebody makes an offer, a bank asks, or a partner leaves - and then the difference between roughly and precisely is the negotiation.
A worked example, built from the pattern these engagements follow in real estate agencies. The business is composite and unnamed; the mechanics, the sequence and the order of work are the ones we use. Talk to us about your own numbers.
Frequently asked questions.
Do you manage our trust account?
Your trust accounting stays in your property management software under your licensee obligations - what we do is keep the general account clean around it: trust journal flows recorded correctly, disbursements reconciled and the audit trail tidy for your annual trust audit.
Can you track commission splits?
Yes - sales commissions, conjunctions and salesperson splits tracked accurately from contract to payment, so every agent's statement reconciles and disputes stop happening.
How does agency payroll work with commissions?
Retainers, commissions and bonuses run through award-compliant payroll with payday super timed to every cycle - the mixed remuneration handled properly.
Can you help before our trust audit?
Yes - clean general books and reconciled trust-to-general flows make the annual audit faster and cheaper. We prepare the supporting records your auditor will ask for.
Do you audit our trust account?
No, and nobody doing your day to day bookkeeping should. The trust audit is carried out by an approved auditor who is independent of the agency, and the licensee obligations stay with the licensee. Our job sits on the other side of the wall: the agency's own books, the commission income once it has properly become yours, and the records that make the auditor's questions quick to answer instead of expensive.
Where exactly does the trust account stop and our books start?
At the point money is drawn from trust to the agency's operating account. Rent collected, deposits and sale monies held are not agency money and never appear as agency income - they belong to the landlord, the buyer or the seller until they are correctly disbursed. What lands in your books is the management fee, the letting fee, the commission and any recovery you are entitled to draw. Get that line wrong and your turnover looks like the size of the rent roll, which flows straight through to a BAS reporting GST on money that was never yours.
How should vendor paid advertising be handled?
It depends on who carries the cost. If the agency books and pays for the campaign and then recovers it from the seller, there is an expense and a matching recovery, and both need to be in the file. Netting them off hides real spend. Grossing them up as commission inflates turnover and distorts every margin you look at afterwards. Where VPA is paid up front by the vendor into trust, it is not agency money at all until it is spent on their behalf. We set the treatment once so campaigns stop landing in three different places.
Our income swings hard from month to month. Can the books do anything about it?
They cannot smooth it, but they can make it readable. Sales commission lands at settlement, not at contract, so a strong listing month shows up in the numbers eight or ten weeks later. Property management fees are the opposite: steady, predictable and the thing that actually pays the rent and the wages between settlements. Reported separately, you can see how many months of overheads the rent roll covers on its own, which is a far more useful number than a P&L that looks brilliant in one month and alarming the next.
What does agency bookkeeping cost?
A fixed monthly fee based on your transaction volume, agent count and payroll - agreed up front. Use the estimator for an indicative range.
Books that pass every audit calmly.
Talk to a bookkeeper who knows agencies. 07 3899 8311, or book a free consultation.